The Social-Democratic group in the Third Duma was the
first Social-Democratic parliamentary group in Russia
to manage to exist for several years and to stand a long
“test” of working jointly with the party of the working
class. For obvious reasons we cannot here tell the story of
this work. We can and must point out only the most
important feature: what was the impact of the Party’s
development on the Duma group, and how did relations between
the group and the Party change?

First of all, we have to establish the fact that the early
steps in the activity of the Social-Democratic group in
the Third Duma aroused the strong dissatisfaction and
sharp disapproval of the Majority of the Party. The group
was largely dominated by the Mensheviks, who were in
opposition to the Party’s 1907
decisions,[2] and the
Social-Democratic group in the Third Duma continued or took
over this “opposition.”

A kind of struggle began between the Party and the
group. The group’s declaration was attacked—and quite
rightly—for its opportunism. The periodicals which
represented the opinion of the Majority of the Party, or of
the Party as a whole, repeatedly criticised the group’s
opportunist steps, and noted that on a number of questions
the group had either failed to set forth the Party’s views
in full, or had expressed them wrongly.

A long list of the mistakes and erroneous actions of the
Third Duma group subject to correction was officially
recognised in December
1908.[3] Naturally, it was clearly
stated at the time that the responsibility fell not only
on the group, but also on the whole Party, which ought to
pay more attention to its Duma group and work more
closely with it.

The results of that work are there for all to see. Between
1908 and 1912, the Right wing of Menshevism in the Party
developed into liquidationism. The four-year struggle
of both Bolsheviks and pro-Party
Mensheviks[4] against
liquidationism cannot be excised from history, however
much Luch would like to do so.

During these four years, the Social-Democratic Duma
group, from being in opposition to the Party, from being
a group criticised by the Party and defended (and
sometimes directly encouraged in its opportunism) by the
Mensheviks, became an anti-liquidationist group.

The group’s connections with the various newspapers by
1912 have provided documentary evidence of this.
Astrakhantsev and Kuznetsov contributed to the liquidationist
Zhivoye Dyelo. Belousov did too, but he soon left the group
altogether, sending it an extremely liquidationist message
with sympathetic references to Martov and Nasha
Zarya[5]
(Mr. Belousov’s historic message will probably soon appear
in the press).

Furthermore, Shurkanov wrote both for the liquidationist
and for the anti-liquidationist newspapers. Gegechkori
and Chkheidze wrote for neither. The other 8 members of
the group (Voronin, Voiloshnikov, Yegorov, Zakharov,
Pokrovsky, Predkaln, Poletayev and Surkov) contributed
to the anti-liquidationist publications.

In 1911–12 Nasha Zarya repeatedly expressed its
dissatisfaction with the Social-Democratic Duma group: the
liquidators could not be pleased at the Menshevik group’s
siding with the anti-liquidators.

The experience of work in the Black-Hundred Duma, and
the experience of struggle against the Right wing of
Menshevism, which has sunk into the swamp of
liquidationism, all tended to push the Social-Democratic group in
the Third Duma to the left, towards the Party, and away
from opportunism.

Very many, especially those who find it unpleasant,
are wont to forget this remarkable story of the four-year
struggle of the Party for a Party attitude in the group
(which only means, of course, its ideological orientation,
its line). But the story is a fact. It should be remembered.
It should be the point of departure in assessing the work
of the group in the Fourth Duma. Of this, more in the
next article.

Notes

[1]The first article was published (under a similar title) in Pravda
No. 191 on December 12, 1912 (see present edition, Vol. 18,
pp. 437–38). In 1954, the Central Committee of the Polish United
Workers’ Party handed the C.P.S.U. Central Committee material
of Lenin’s Cracow-Poronin archives, discovered in Cracow, among
which were the manuscripts of the third and fifth articles, “The
Working Class and Its ‘Parliamentary’ Representatives”. They
were first published in April 1954 in the journal Kommunist.
The second and fourth articles have not been found.

[2]The resolution of the Fourth Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (the
Third All-Russia Conference), held at Helsingfors from
November 5 to 12 (18 to 25), 1907, “On the Tactics of the Social–
Democratic Group in the Duma” (see KPSS v resolyutsiyakh..., Part
One, 1954, pp. 182–84).

[3]The resolution of the Fifth Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. held
in Paris from December 21 to 27, 1908 (January 3 to 9, 1909),
“On the Duma Social-Democratic Group” (see KPSS v
resolyutsiyakh..., Part One, 1954, pp. 198–201).

[4]The pro-Party Mensheviks—a small group of Mensheviks led
by Plekhanov, who separated from the Menshevik-liquidators and
opposed the trend from 1908 to 1912.

[5]Nasha Zarya (Our Dawn)—a legal Menshevik-liquidator monthly,
published in St. Petersburg from 1910 to 1914. It was the
liquidators’ centre in Russia.